All Summer in a Day: Aftermath
by Nederbird
Summary: A short story about Margot's thoughts and feelings after being deprived of the moment under the Sun that she'd been yearning for. Oneshot.


**This is an old story a wrote as an English assignment when I was in the spring term of ninth grade (2007) when I was only 15, a time when I didn't even know this site existed and my only previous experience in fanfics was from an RPG in the forums. I stumbled upon this while working on a project for my English class and thought I'd upload it, as I remember being rather proud of it. It's nothing special, but I was hoping that someone might just enjoy it. :)  
**

* * *

Time slowed down to a crawl and there was a complete silence, the other children formed a circle around her. She just stood there in the middle, turning her hed around very slowly, eyeing every single one of them. She was shivering, her skin totally pale and here eyes wide. Everyone just stood there for fifteen minutes, everyone being silent... everyone being still. As if time itself had stopped. The teacher, who finally understood the graviy of the situation, broke this utter silence.

"Ok, everyone back to the classroom and continue working on your Chinese exercises. Margot, you're coming with me." The teacher grabbed Margot by the hand and took her to the staff room while the other children went away to the classroom. Both were silent all the time. At the office, Margot got a cup of hot chocolate while the teacher phoned home to her parents.

"Hi, this is Evelyn Robertson, Margot's teacher", she paused. "I needed to call you because Margot's had quite a bad day today and I think it's best you come and bring her home… yes and it's anything but pleasant… well the other pupils locked her up in a closet for about two hours", then came a long pause. "Oh no, you shouldn't worry, we'll sort this out, I promise… well, it wasn't totally unforeseeable… it's been going on like this for some time now, hasn't she told you anything?… Oh, poor girl… we've been advised to call the authorities if anything like this would ever happen, but we'll try to solve it on a local level first… yes, I also think that in the meantime it'd be best for Margot to stay home, before we've solved the problem… alright, good then. Bye, see you soon." After putting down the phone she turned to Margot.

"Everything will be alright… I'm sorry Margot", she said. Margot didn't reply, she was too shaken to say anything at all. She just sat there, sipping her hot chocolate, all silent, listening to the various background noises in the room: a clock ticking, the ventilation, the muffled humming of a computer.

After about 15 minutes, her mom came to pick her up. When Mrs. Robertson said goodbye to her, she didn't move her lips. It was as if she was in another world. All the way home she sat silent and still, all pale, she looked more like an ancient Roman marble statue than a human. When they came home she went directly to her room and laid herself down on her bed, where she'd lye for the rest of the day. Her feelings were mixed, while she was angry for what her classmates had done to her, she was at the same time scared and very sad. She was overcome by an enormous feeling of apathy; she wanted to disappear, to just die away in her bed.

"Nobody would miss me anyways", she thought. All her classmates her hated her, and probably every other Venusian too. There was no chance that she'd ever be able to return to Earth again, Venus was to her like a gulag was to a Russian. She wanted away from here, away from Venus and it's never-ending rains and underground colonies. Away from all hating people and inhospitable surface world. Home, that's where she wanted to go. Back to Wales and their big house in the forest, back to her old friends. Here everything was dark and the people shunned her. There the sun used to cast its rays over the treetops and people were polite and friendly. It was two different worlds… literally.

Days passed almost unnoticeably, each one the same as the other. Though it was a relief for Margot to be free from her tormenting classmates, she was still more or less depressed. During the monotone days she wouldn't do much else besides doing her homework which Mrs. Robertson would send home to her every day), watch TV or read a book, her magazines or the newspaper. Before she knew it, a whole week had passed.

She wasn't happy at all about returning to school, quite the contrary, she abhorred it. But it wasn't like she had any choice… she had to do it. During the first lesson she didn't notice any differences, however during the following break her classmates were totally different, as if they had been transformed. They no longer teased her, scorned her, annoyed her and shouted at her like before. They didn't avoid her anymore and contrary to what they'd been last week, they were all friendly this time. While this certainly was something that made her day, there was still this strange, disturbing feeling that something was very wrong about it all.

Her classmates looked… scared, they were always staring and their faces were almost as pale as Margot's own. Sometimes someone would stutter when talking, not that kind of nervous stuttering but more like the kind of shivering, frightened stuttering. They behaved very kindly towards her now; almost too kindly… their goodwill seemed so strange, so alien. As if it wasn't really them. She tried to ignore it however, and instead think about how nice it was to finally be free from their hateful comments and to be able to talk to them.

However after the P.E. lesson when everyone went to the showers, she noticed that Hannah, one of her classmates, had a number combination tattooed onto the upper part of her left arm, then she noticed that everyone else also had that too. Suddenly she got the feeling that they had been in some sort of a prison, since only prisoners get that sort of combination tattooed onto their arms. Later on during their English lesson, a clean cut man in a black suit came to her desk and asked her, with a clear Welsh accent: "Is everything alright?" She just nodded back in response; the man then smiled and spoke to her.

"Good, now if something like this ever happens again, don't be afraid to report it to us. We'll take care of it" he then blinked his left eye, stood up and left. But not before saying a few words to Mrs. Robertson. When she later asked Mrs. Robertson of where the others had been, she didn't know anything else other than that they'd been in some camp or special education most of the last week. However, when she asked Gary, another classmate, the same thing, his only reply was: "Be glad that you don't know, 'cause you'd never want to."

While life for Margot certainly got better after this and even though her classmates acted better towards her and that their strange behaviour had diminished, she could never really shake the feeling that something horrible always lurked in the background. Watching them, all of them…


End file.
